A Quiet Week

December 7, 2001-Weighing In

It’s been a long time since I last wrote. There really hasn’t been a lot happening here in Lake Woebegone by-the-sea.

Thank you all who wrote regarding the military tribunals. There was no predicting your opinions. Some of you who I thought would be in favor of them weren’t & the reverse was true. I’m still disturbed & undecided. The thought of the FBI going under cover in houses of worship is unsettling, but the recent events here give me pause. The terrorist who was apprehended in India yesterday trained as a pilot in Australia & was recruited by an Imam in a Melbourne mosque. You may have read that he was at the airport ready to board a commercial airliner on 9/11. He was to hijack it & fly it into the Rialto Tower in Melbourne. The news of the Twin Towers in New York was broadcast before he boarded his flight & he got scared & left the airport.

When we got here & were enthralled with the weather, people said, “Just wait for summer.” Well, summer is here & we now know what they were talking about. The humidity is killing. We have both had feelings of tightness in our chests & have fiddled with the A/C until we could get the right blend of air, coolness, & dehumidification. Leaving the windows open isn’t an option. The skies have been overcast & the winds from the shore bring a salty mist that makes the air thick. We seem to be ok when we’re outside, but there’s something about being inside with that humidity that does us in.

We’ve been planning our New Zealand trip & bought a great guidebook. We usually use Fodor’s, but they don’t carry them here. This one is printed in Great Britain & titled DK (Dorling Kindersley) Eyewitness Travel Guide. I love the maps & color photos, but miss the pricing & rating system of Fodor’s. I was happy to see that the NZ money looks just like the Australian. The denominations are the same & the coins are identical. At least, it appeared to be that way on first glance. As it turns out, the one & two dollar coins are just reversed. New Zealand sensibly made the one-dollar coin smaller than the two dollar one. For some reason known only to the dwellers in the land of Oz, the two dollar Aussie coin in smaller than the one dollar.

News Fit To Hear

TV was never wonderful here, especially without a cable subscription. Now that they’re into the summer shows, it’s abysmal. Last night we found ourselves watching the news….again. I think we keep tuning in hoping something will change for the better. We were in our usual post dinner, TV torpor when it dawned on us that we were watching a telecast about the upcoming elections in the Solomon Islands. We happen to know where the Solomon Islands are because, that afternoon, at the travel agent, I pointed to an area east of New Zealand & said, “Look at all those islands!” We now not only know where they are, but also who is running for election. We know that the opposition is slated to win & that the incumbent is unlikely to recognize his victory should it occur. We were also fortunate enough to observe that the sitting head of state wears saris in fabulous silk fabrics & that she prefers soft colors. The challenger, unfortunately, has a real need for a new barber. His tightly curled, thick, dark hair is reminiscent of a Saturday Night Live cone head whose cone has slipped to the rear at a rakish angle.

Also in the news is the dilemma the IT industry is facing here. There’s a shortage of computer programmers in Australia & they’ve been encouraging people to enter that field. Australians aren’t taking up the slack quickly enough, so the government is farming out the work off shore & looking towards Indian IT workers. The problem is they pay the Indian workers less & are undercutting their own citizens. As part of their training, Indians are being shown Aussie movies & TV shows & undergoing crash courses in Australian culture.

David has just finished re-reading Bill Bryson’s book In A Sunburned Country & I’m starting. It’s even funnier now that we have experienced what he writes about. It raises some questions such as how did Australia end up with ten varieties of deadly snakes & New Zealand with none?

Tonight is a family service at temple. There will be a Chanukah play & the children will participate in the service. They expect a big crowd. As always, my mother’s yahrzeit (remembrance of the anniversary of her death) falls on a family night.

Wednesday night at the Thai restaurant, I asked someone to sing Advance Australia Fair. Sure enough, the tune that had sounded familiar when I first heard it was eerily similar to the old Purim song, “ Oh Once There Was a Wicked Wicked Man.” They’d never heard of that song here.

Cruelest Cut

David, who's allergic to mangoes but loves them, encouraged me to buy one for myself. . Did you know that mangoes belong to the poison oak family? We just finished lunch & I have a question to pose. How many items does it take to prepare & serve a mango? Let’s count. There’s the mango itself, the cutting board, the large knife with which to slice it initially, & the small knife to pry the sections away from the pit when it’s discovered they won’t let loose because the mango isn’t ripe. There’s the fork that’s also used to pry the fruit from the pit when the paring knife fails to be effective. This fork is able to double as an eating implement. There’s a plate on which to serve the mango to only one person. We can’t forget the rags, paper towels, & cloths needed to mop up after the fruit is served. In our case, there was also a dishtowel, a bottle of alcohol, a few cotton balls, anti-bacterial ointment, & two band-aids involved. The alcohol was to pour over my hand after I pierced it with the larger of the two knives. One cotton ball was used to apply pressure to staunch the bleeding. When that didn’t work, a dishtowel was grabbed & wadded up to add more pressure. For some reason, the sensation of the knife piercing my flesh & stopping at bone was a tad nauseating for me. I got woozy and, always the drama queen, ended up lying down in the bedroom. Since the apartment is so tiny, it was easy to direct David to the ointment while admonishing him to avoid the flayed mango that lay exposed & ready to drip its poison onto him. What was he doing looking for the ointment in the kitchen, you ask? Storage space is at a premium here. My travel case with first aid necessities is stored in a kitchen cupboard. I’m sure I’ve told you that David’s shorts & t-shirts are also there. Never daunted, David skillfully created a bandage by swathing my hand in a cotton ball/band-aid wrap that will serve me well. Fortunately, the puncture wound was on my left hand. After all the fuss & mess, it turned out to be quite small. Lunch proceeded without a hitch. The mango was not worth it. I’m told that here they put mangoes in turkey stuffing. I think I’ll stick with cranberries.

Toby

More Authentic Than What?

December 3, 2001-BBQ

The Aussie BBQ at the temple last night was a lot more fun than we thought it would be. They served the usual sausage (beef) & burgers & had a damper taste off. I didn’t win, but mine looked & tasted pretty decent. The winner had raisins in it. Next time I make it, I might put chocolate chips in. Chocolate can never hurt.

They’d hired a DJ for the night & he looked like an Aussie DJ should. He had the long hair, beard, & generally unkempt look of someone who spends more time with his horse than people. He was actually a retired stage actor whose claim to fame was playing the villain in Don Quixote. He bragged that he got to rape Dulcinea eight times a week. Accompanied by a keyboard he set by punching in a set of numbers for each song, he sang Australian songs that were familiar & some that were not. They were about lost love, lost opportunities, & lost dogs. They resemble our country western tunes but are sung in the language of Oz. If you’re familiar with Waltzing Matilda you know what I mean. For some odd reason, he launched into a medley of Al Jolson oldies before detouring to English favorites. When he belted out the Lambeth Walk, lots of Brits got up & gave it a go. From what I could tell, the Lambeth Walk is just that. People walk around to the beat & at a specified time shout out, “Oy!”

Bush poets are well known here & one man recited, from memory a long, lyrical ode to a grandchild. Jokes were told (some ribald) & then the lagerphone contest began. A lagerphone is an outback musical instrument made from a stick to which has been loosely nailed as many beer caps as you can. Pounding the end of the stick on the ground jingles the bottle caps & produces the “music.” I asked a young boy if he had to drink beer to get all the caps. He sheepishly told me that he’d bought them. Australia may be unique as a place where you can buy only the beer bottle caps. I would guess that bottle caps for real lagerphones come from the macho outback tradition of emptying the bottles Aussie style. The one thing was missing from the evening was beer. The committee said they have a cooler full of beer & wine left over from another event. It went begging & they didn’t think it would be needed tonight. From the way the group danced & carried on, it wasn’t.

The music shifted to the more danceable kind & the 70+ year old set started to show their stuff. Suddenly, my ears perked up. They were playing the Chicken dance. I never thought I’d be thankful for all the bar mitzvah parties we’ve had to attend over the years! David & I joined in like pros. The line dancing took off & our lessons at the Jewish Community Center paid off. I danced some form of boot scoot, several renditions of the inevitable electric slide, & then I heard the DJ key in #149 on the keyboard. It was the Macarena. I became a dancing fool. Of course, never having had a rabbinic couple before, the group didn’t know what to expect. They ate it up.

The evening had started at 5:30pm & the DJ was booked until 8:30pm. This was a record for the Jewish community here. Usually they eat & run. Most people stayed to the end. For us, it was still early, so we went to coffee with some people who had an interest in the resolutions made by the Moetzah at the meeting in Hahndorf. As we were leaving the temple, a woman went up to David & told him that her daughter is a lesbian. That’s three out of 100 families. It’s nothing like our Akron statistics of 250+ out of 600 families who have come out to us, but it’s a start. We’ve been out in Akron since 1990 & it’s only been three months here.

When I told Syd Bruce about my ultimate Australian experience with a wallaby, he burst my bubble. He asked if the wallaby had weed on me. When I said that it hadn’t, he said that it wasn’t really authentic.

Janet Bruce had a 50% off coupon for a resort on Frasier Island so we booked it today for Dec. 17-18. Frasier is the largest sand island in the world. It’s about two hours north of here. We have to park our car on the mainland & take a catamaran to the island. We can take 4-wheel drive tours there or rent a SUV ourselves. There is a dune national park as well as fresh water lakes safe for swimming. The main animal attraction is dingoes. Since it’s so isolated, they are purebred. The dingoes are feral & are not to be fed. Small children do have to be carefully watched. Dingoes have been known to carry them off. We’ll take time to drive up the Sunshine Coast on Sunday after adult education & probably stay over along the way. David won’t have to miss services for this trip since it will be mid-week.

We also booked dinner at the Italian restaurant at Jupiter’s Casino across the street & the floor show/revue for our anniversary. We keep asking people where good Italian food is in this area & they all keep telling us it’s Andianno’s at Jupiter’s. Here’s hoping.

Toby

Ozward!

December 1, 2001-It’s Alive!

Some days are more interesting than others. Some turn into adventures leading us down paths we never expected to travel. Today was such a day. We went to a Gold Coast chapter PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians & Gays) meeting at 12:30pm & didn’t get back to our apartment until 7pm.

It was a small group of nine people who gathered at QAC (Queensland AIDS Council). We’d spoken to the leaders, a married couple (Susan & Roger), a few times & were warmly greeted by the others. The usual tales were told, tears were shed, & questions answered. We learned that the state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, has had a liaison to the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered) community as part of the police force for years. Queensland has just implemented the same program for its police. The order for the plan & training came right from the prime minister & was signed off on by everyone down the line. Since Queensland, despite its name, is one of the more homophobic states, this was quite a coup. Be that as it may, there was nothing memorable about any of that. As the meeting went on, a movement caught my eye. There was a basket with some blankets in it next to David. The blankets began to move & I saw what looked like the ear of a cat. I wasn’t able to hold back so I went over to investigate. As I approached, a long, naked, un-catlike tale appeared. I looked into the tangled heap and made out a snout & two huge black eyes. Was it a baby Chihuahua? But the paws were strange. Susan settled the question by announcing, “That’s a baby wallaby.” I was lost to the meeting after that.

The PFLAG couple who leads the group are animal rescuers & Blossom was their most recent project. They’ve been saving wild babies for years & then releasing them back into the wild. I not only got to pet Blossom, but I got to rock her & feed her a bottle. She lives in a flannel pouch that’s her home until she’s old enough to venture out. She’s so young that she doesn’t have any hair. That will come in a couple of weeks. After the meeting we went for lunch (everyone but us brought theirs to the meeting) & coffee. Blossom came along in her basket. Her care is a full time job. Someone has to be there to feed & clean her constantly. Kangaroos & other marsupials live in the pouch & are always feeding. I asked about the sanitation facilities in the pouch & learned that even as newborns, they hang their bottoms over the edge so the pouch stays clean. I also learned that when there are babies of different ages who are still nursing, they always go to the same nipple. Each nipple provides a different formula depending on the age of the nursing baby. Susan said that they’d call for a date when we can come to their home to see the opossum & older wallaby they’re working with now. This was the best Australian experience I’ve had to date. Can it get more Oz-like?

Pottering and Pilfering

Since we were at the mall, we went to the Cinemas to check the time for the next Harry Potter showing. We were in luck & only had a 20-minute wait. The movie is playing hourly at every theater here & it wasn’t crowded. We thoroughly enjoyed it & I thought that the child actors were excellent. I was afraid that seeing on screen what I’d only imagined while reading the books would be disappointing. We didn’t find that to be true at all. We wound up getting home at 7PM & fell upon the leftovers from last night’s dinner.

Some not so good news is that our neighbor was burglarized. He was asleep on his couch when a man came in through his open balcony window. He startled the burglar who then jumped from the balcony & broke his ankle. The neighbor then realized his money, credit cards, & briefcase were missing. The conversation came up because we were about to report a suspected attempt to break into our apartment. There was a recent gouge to the door near the latch that looked as if someone had pried it with a screwdriver. We did call the desk & they sent the maintenance man up. He agreed it looked suspicious & would paint it. There was no mention of adding a deadbolt or chain. I may ask them to do that on Monday.

December 2, 2001-Sunday Stuff

There’s a strict boat licensing law here. I don’t know what age you have to be, but there is a written & practical test. I know this because Syd Bruce told us that when he took his test he made a right turn into a waterway & went up the American side. I guess the rules of the road apply to navigation as well. On the open sea, when an Australian ship & an American ship pass, which side do they go to? It’s probably standardized like for airplanes.

A major article in the Sunday paper this morning was about Ian Roberts, an out, gay former rugby league international player. He & his partner of six years want to become parents. When was the last time news like this about a male sports figure broke in America?

The social club is having a real Aussie BBQ tonight at the temple. We’re all supposed to bring damper. It’s a bread made from flour, water, salt, & baking powder. It’s cooked over a campfire, as is Billy tea. I cooked my damper in the oven, but I’ll get to swing Billy tea this evening. Tealeaves are put in a teapot with boiled water. The teapot is then swung around until it’s tea. I hope to avoid being scalded by first making iced Billy tea.

Toby

Innovation

November 29, 2001-Catching Up
(photo: Improvised Shabbat Table)

Thank you all who sent us the Krispy Kreme site. I hadn’t had time to look up the correct spelling. It’s nice to know so many of you are still reading these. In looking at the site, I realized that, for overseas stores, they want about $5 million in assets with the ability to back the opening of at least 10 stores. That leaves us out.

I had my hair cut today & got a vocabulary lesson at the same time. The beauty shop proprietor’s definition of “rorting” is to cheat. There have been lots of reports of rorting in the press. A “larrikin” is a loveable scoundrel & is aspired to by the Aussies of the male persuasion. A “hoon” & a “yabbu” are young men who like to drive fast & make a minor nuisance of themselves. They stay within the law, but when they don’t they haven’t gone crook. That’s being sick.

I haven’t given you an update on Wendy in a long time. She’s still in Minneapolis & working at the university. She’s put her house on the market. She and her cats are preparing to move in with her girlfriend/partner. They met late summer/early fall &, for Wendy, the relationship has moved at lightning speed. Wendy was of the mind that she wouldn’t even exchange keys unless she’d dated someone for months. We’ve not met Wendy's new love, but she must be very special. Ironically, she too works at the U of Minnesota. She’s a carpenter. It’s always nice to have someone handy in the family. We put her emailed photo on our refrigerator here, so it’s official. The logistics of the move have revolved around the animals: Willie, a dog, & cat, Malachai are the original residents. They’ve been acclimating to Wendy’s cats, Oscar & Gabriel with some success. Wendy’s cats are now living in the finished attic & will slowly be introduced to the rest of the house.


Syd Bruce turns 49 today & his wife, Janet, is having a BBQ at their house. He’s not happy about birthdays in general & this one in particular. I told him to hang around people who are older than he to feel young. That’s what we’re doing here at the congregation. We’re bringing some wine to the barbie, but since I have a refrigerator full of food for Shabbat dinner, I’ve asked the bottle shop downstairs to store the wine for me in their cooler until I pick it up tonight. What will I do without my handy downstairs liquor storage when I get home? December 1, 2001-Being Set Up

The Bruces came for Shabbat dinner last night. It went very well. It was our first foray into the world of mini-entertaining. It shows what you can do when you have to innovate. My refrigerator & freezer were filled to over-flowing so that I was constantly moving food out of one & into the other as preparation progressed. I also was short implements such as bowls & utensils so I was constantly washing & re-using them. I made chopped liver & didn’t have a chopper, grinder, or food processor. Do you know that you can smash liver with a potato ricer/masher? It has to be done on a flat surface, but once the suckers give up & squeeze through the holes on the masher, they can be put in a bowl & pulverized into a smooth consistency. I had to make two briskets & the butcher only had the 2nd one come in on Fri. I didn’t start cooking it until 2PM so I was busy slicing it at the last minute. I needed to cook the vegetables in the gravy & there was no room in the electric skillet so I put them in the oven in some disposable aluminum pans.

Aussies tend to always have alternative main courses. I decided on chicken and needed the oven to grill the chicken breasts. Before the veggie/chicken issue, I had to deal with making brownies. The box mix had measurements & directions in centigrade, Fahrenheit, centimeters, & inches. I found out that this is because many Australians have older ovens & measures that go back to before they converted to metric. There were also instructions dealing with the different cooking temperatures & times for regular bake & “fan bake” ovens. I suspect the fan bake is convection. Timing was hairy, but it all ended up on the table in good order & was devoured, but not totally. We’re looking forward to leftovers.

Setting the table was another thing. David borrowed a bridge table from the temple & when we set it up we realized that only a short person with skinny legs sitting on chair with sawed off legs could sit at it. Fortunately we had two people who qualified, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to amputate chair legs. We moved the table in from the patio & voila, we had a banquet table that seated eight. Fortunately, only seven were coming. When we stepped back to survey our ingenuity, we saw that the table was on three levels from standard height descending to the Lilliputian card table. In an attempt to add color, pizzazz & uniformity to the ensemble, I used mismatched beach towels as tablecloths. The effect was bizarre, but funky. It reminded me of walking into the Tangiers restaurant in Akron. A Lebanese family owns it & I think that they have used every geometric pattern & primary color in each of their several dining rooms.

We had invested in a lovely set of white plastic coated tableware & some blue & yellow daisy patterned serviettes (napkins). To this we added plastic utensils in green, blue, & pink. Serving bowls were whatever fit. The challah ended up in a mixing bowl after it was sliced & the gravy was efficiently poured from a measuring cup. Hey, it was the only thing that had a spout besides the teapot. The teapot has been the repository for David’s dry crushed red peppers ever since we were lucky enough to find some. I had David take a picture of the table before anyone sat down. I’m convinced this is the way to break the ice at a formal dinner party. It definitely generated conversation. Forget the matching china & sterling. Bring on the weird.

We’re going to a PFLAG (Parents, Family & Friends of Lesbians & Gays)meeting today. It’s the Gold Coast chapter & meets a block from where we live. We’ll keep you posted.

Toby

Detours

November 28, 2001-Highways and Byways
(photos:Platypus viewing,
Birds of Australia)

We had a fun day exploring the Hinterlands with Andy & Donna, the son and daughter-in-law of friends back home. It was kind of a dress rehearsal for the visit of Ron & Karen also friends from home. They’re coming in Feb. We’re so excited to be able to show people around.

We headed for the mountains & O’Reily’s in Lamington National Park. We’d heard that it would be an hour-long ride, but the people we asked didn’t tell us about the winding road. All they said was that it was scenic. We should know by now that scenic is a euphemism for “sharp curves on narrow mountain roads.” We picked our friends up at 11:30 AM since David had a funeral to do at 10AM.

We’d planned to be at O’Reily’s for lunch, but between the road & interesting things to see along the way, we didn’t get there until 2 P.M. First, we pulled off at a sign that directed us to an historic tunnel. We walked downhill on a path as David reminded us it would be uphill on the way back to the car. When we got to the end there was indeed a tunnel. It had been used for a tram that served a sawmill & was a storage place for munitions during WWII. It had a great echo & no bats. Continuing on up the mountain we literally gasped at the scenery.

David did a masterful job of negotiating the curves & I only urged him to move away from the edge once while Donna restrained herself & voiced what I was about to when she asked that he slow down. At that point we were in a 100km speed zone on a straight-away & he was doing 80km.

Our next stop was the Canunga Valley Vineyard where we thought we’d get a bite to eat before wine tasting. They didn’t really have any food to speak of so David abstained. The drinking & driving laws are very strict here. Andy & Donna stared tasting & I didn’t see anything I liked so I decided not to try anything. Along the way, I got tempted & ended up loving their port & a dessert wine. The bartender was quite a card. When we asked him to take our picture, he told us to pose behind the bar. Then he asked me to pour him some tastes. We ended up buying the port & our friends treated us to a bottle of the dessert wine. They walked away with a couple of bottles themselves.

The property backed to a pond where platypus live, so we strolled on over for a look. They’re very shy & even though we stayed behind the viewing fence, we only caught a glimpse of a turtle. The fence was really a screen with openings in the shape of platypus cut into it through which you could look. It reminded me of fences I’d seen at construction sites. On our way back down the mountain, we decided to stop for a look again since it was dusk. That’s a better time to see them. As everyone was looking through the holes, I crept around to the other side & stuck my hand through to poke Andy. I thought he’d jump over the fence. We were rewarded for our patience with several sightings of platypus bubbles. The water was quite muddy & they never surfaced, so we never really saw the animals themselves.

We continued our climb to O’Reiily’s, but thought we’d taken a wrong turn. We asked some workmen for directions & it was like a Keystone Cops comedy. One pointed to his left, one pointed to his right, & one pointed directly behind. We roared with laughter until it was explained to us they were all correct. There was a loop that we had to take & it was accessible from either direction & ran behind where they were. We were off once again & even though we didn’t think it possible, the road got narrower. When we got to O’Reily’s, we decided to investigate an alternate route back, but realized we were at a dead end & there was only one way down the mountain.

New Heights

As we got out of the car, exquisite tropical birds surrounded us. There were red & green rosellas, some black & gold birds, & ones we couldn’t even identify let alone describe. People were feeding them, photographing them, & shooing them off their heads. It was obvious the birds were part of the attraction. After a quick lunch at the café overlooking the forest, we headed for the trail leading to the tree top walk. The path headed off into the forest & before we could even get into a nature mode, we went by a power plant that served the resort. It wasn’t reassuring for what we’d hoped to be a day of pristine pleasures, but things improved quickly when wallaby hopped across our path.

The trail led to a skywalk bridge that circled around the rainforest & came out at the botanical gardens. I was the only one of the group who liked heights & thought the excursion was a kick. We came to a ladder that went up two levels to platforms from which you could look out over a huge expanse of the parklands. I love to climb & I was on my way up in a jiffy. The ladder was even enclosed with a mesh cage, so there was no need to worry. As I climbed, I came nose to frond with an enormous basket/crow’s nest fern. It was intriguing to get to look into it at that proximity. When I got to the first level I saw that I was on my own. All the wimps were back on the ground looking up at me. I then realized I didn’t have a camera with me so Andy offered to climb up with it. It was a major sacrifice for him & he didn’t look too happy. He did bring his own camera, so he has evidence of his heroic feat. Needless to say, he didn’t join me in the climb to level two. That was a good thing. The ladder to that level leaned back at an awkward angle. The wind started blowing & the ladder, mesh cage, and tree started to sing & hum. It was totally thrilling. At that point the groundlings called up to me that there were others waiting to climb. I invited them to join me, but my group was ready to move on. I reluctantly left my perch & scooted on down.

As we emerged from the rainforest (past the power plant) we saw a small group gathered around a ute (pick-up truck) that had a ladder going from the truck bed to a nearby tree. There was a man on the ladder fiddling with the tree & a woman on the ground holding a gray object in her hand. Evidently a baby bird had fallen from a nest & the O’Reily’s worker was clearing a way to the nest so he could put it back. He said that the grounds crew would watch the nest for a few days to be sure the parents returned to feed it. If not, they’d see what they could do to care for it. I thought that was really going out of his way.

Happy Returns

We wanted to get down the mountain before sunset, so we headed out. We’d passed an alpaca farm on the way up & decided to stop there to pet the animals. We arrived just as they’d been put away for the night, but they aren’t for petting anyway. There’s a gift shop where they sell items made from the alpaca wool. There’s also a café overlooking what I would have sworn was a painted backdrop. The sun was glinting at just the right angle on the valley & the tiny houses & cows looked like props. There was even a blindingly blue lake that reflected the crystal clarity of the sky & the few white puffs of cloud.

We stopped a few more times at the roadside. There was a big black cow grazing next to the road in unfenced pastureland. That accounted for road signs warning motorists to be prepared to stop unexpectedly. It was so big & so close that we wanted a photo of it. It looked directly at the camera & seemed poised to charge the car, but no worries. Cows are so docile. When we pulled away, we saw it wasn’t a cow but a bull. Whoops! Donna spotted some wallaby but we couldn’t stop in time to take a picture. We did pull over at a cemetery when I thought I saw a kangaroo. It turned out to be a cross marker with a wreath on it.

We dropped Andy & Donna off at their hotel so they could get ready for a cruise of the canals that night & pack for their 5-day stay in New Zealand tomorrow. We headed for dinner at Pasha’s, a Turkish restaurant near our apartment. David had an assorted plate of grilled specialties & I ordered a pide. It’s an unusual pizza type dish made on Turkish bread. I’ve never had anything like it before. It was excellent. That place is a keeper.

As I write this, David’s on the balcony listening to music from a pool party downstairs. They’re playing “Come On Baby Light My Fire” & selections from the Bee Gee’s. I told you it’s the 70’s here.

Toby

Keeping Up

November 26, 2001-Seasonal Anomalies

Only in Australia would there be a full-page ad with a red banner headline that says, FIRE ANTS. The page is covered with a map in shades of red & gray showing where the treatment areas are. An explanation of the nature & severity of the problem is cited stating,” …fire ants can easily be mistaken for our local ants. Fire ants are very aggressive and when they’re disturbed they will swarm and sting en masse.” There follows three sketches of the various sizes of fire ants & an emergency toll free number to call if you’ve seen any. Queensland Government Department of Primary Industries sponsors the ad. At the bottom of the page is a website: www.dpi.qld.gov.au.

It must be the rainy season. There have been a few showers that haven’t bothered anyone very much since it has stayed in the high 70’s-low 80’s. It’s been overcast, which is OK with me. Even with sun screen & a hat, I feel less vulnerable if the sun isn’t beating down on me as well. We tried to walk on the beach the other day & it was so windy we gave up. Our hats were blowing off, any exposed skin was covered with sand granules that stuck to our sunscreen, & David’s glasses were coated with grit. We just went from the beach to the path that parallels the shore & it was fine. We could still see the ocean.

David has been telling people here what they need to make Australia great are two things: good kosher hot dogs & Krispie Kreme Donuts. People understand about the hot dogs since most have been to the States & have eaten them. But Krispie Kreme is an enigma. The other day, David was talking to a man who’d just returned from a trip to the U.S. He marveled at his new find. He’d been to Chicago, L.A., & Las Vegas and had fallen in love with Krispie Kreme. We’ll probably go on line to see what it takes to get a franchise. Anyone interested?

Not only do they have tall & short coffee here, but they also have long & short soup. We went to a Chinese restaurant & were surprised we were having trouble reading the menu. Short soup is wonton & long soup has long noodles in it. I’d also never seen emu satay or moo shu roo before. True to Aussie cuisine, the kung pao chicken was mild, but flavorful. The Mongolian beef was great.

November 27, 2001-Adaptation

I know I’ve told you that everyone here has a mobile phone. There’s no such thing as unlimited phone service on landlines, so they tend to use their mobiles a lot. Text messaging is also popular. It’s a source of a lot of inane communication & contributes to road hazards. People aren’t only dialing their phones & talking while driving, they’re also reading text messages. I haven’t yet seen anyone drive & send a text message. I’m sure it happens. Now there’s something new. A soap opera has been written solely for use on mobile phones. If you subscribe, you’ll get daily scripts text messaged to your phone. Has this caught on in the U.S? What next? I’ll keep you posted.

I really wanted to reciprocate & invite the Bruces for dinner, so I bit the bullet. They’re coming for Shabbat dinner this Friday. I’m madly cooking brisket in my trusty electric skillet. I got one brisket yesterday & have to buy another today. My freezer has limited space. I was toying with the idea of having everyone go down to the IGA & get ice-cream bars for dessert. I have no baking pans or recipes. If their kids come, we’ll have to move the table in from the balcony. Needless to say, with only service for four, we’ll use paper & plastic.

Just got a call from the young couple visitng from the States saying we’re on for tomorrow. They’re the son & daughter-in-law of friends. We’re really excited to be able to take them into the Hinterlands & rainforest and spending the day with them. I’m kind of flattered they’d want to spend time with the old folks. I guess they survived the flight to the Reef.

If any of you can find the web site for Krispy (Krispie) Kreme Donuts, I’d appreciate it. I’ve been unsuccessful in my search, although I did find an article that said cheerleaders at Brigham Young Univ. love them.

Toby

Something Old, Something New

November 24, 2001-Friends and Schoolies

The son of friends is here with his wife. They called & left a voice message for us including the phone number of their hotel & room number. I called the hotel & asked to be connected to the room giving the number. The operator asked for the name of the guest & when I told her she said no one by that name was registered. She wasn’t going to connect me. I then realized they may have been registered under the wife's name, but I didn’t know her surname. I told the operator my plight & mentioned the wife's first name. That seemed to do the trick. I was then connected to their voice mail. After being virtually in touch with each other, we finally made contact. We were able to meet them after services for a drink & hope to see them again. They’re doing all the “touristy” things & hope to get close up to koalas, kangaroo, & platypus (platypi?) today. They’ve booked a trip to the Reef as well. He was adventurous enough to eat Moreton Bay bugs his first night in town. They’re tiny crustacean like a mini crayfish from Moreton Bay on the east coast of Australia north of Brisbane.

The security at the hotel seemed extreme & I’m sure it’s not about terrorism. This is “schoolies” time here. It’s spring break in the States multiplied by 6. It lasts at least 6 weeks & is attended by year 12 students. That’s equivalent to our high school seniors. This is the end of their school year. They go according to the calendar year & follow the seasons. This is their summer vacation since it’s now summer here. Tens of thousands (the paper said 70,000) of them descend on Gold Coast & are kept under control by police & the hospitality industry. They’re strict about alcoholic consumption (drinking age is 18) & piling more into a room than have paid. They’ve been known to send kids home for cramming 8 into a room for 4.

I opened the Gold Coast Bulletin this morning & my eyes were drawn to an article headlined, “Gay Insert Confusion.” The University of Akron was mentioned in the first paragraph, so I read on. In the second paragraph I saw the name, “Thomas Dukes” & I became intrigued. Tom is a client of mine who teaches English at Akron U. It seems that he assigned Barbara Pym’s 1952 novel, Excellent Women, to his class. Bound into it was an insert from Christian McLaughlin’s 1998 novel Sex Toys of the Gods. Pyms book deals with respectable spinsters in post WWII London. McLaughlin’s book tells the story of a gay Ohioan in Hollywood. Tom was quoted as saying, “It would be like finding a love scene in the New Testament.” I loved his quote & sent him the article. I also wrote a note telling him that while the New Testament isn’t too sexy that Old one reads like Peyton Place. It seems it was a print shop or bindery error & hadn’t been reported before. At least we know that Tom’s students read the assigned book.

November 25, 2001-Flicks & Fuzz

We went to see The Man Who Sued God last night with the Bruces. We all enjoyed it & Billy Connoley was a riot. Even though it was made in Australia, I’m sure it has been in the U.S. & will soon be seen on the airlines. As far as Harry Potter goes, it opens here in December. We can’t wait to see it. There have been articles about the religious right picketing it in the U.S. It’s great publicity.

Friday night, David gave a sermon/report on what transpired at the meetings in Adelaide. He talked about the patrilineal descent issue & the probability that a resolution will be passed to give rabbis the option to perform same sex commitment ceremonies. He said that the rabbis would study the issue of sexuality & that he & they would proceed to educate the congregations on the issue. He presented it all in a positive light as if it was going to be a “fait a complit.” No one has said anything to him one way or the other about it.

There was a bagel brunch this morning at the temple. I guess it was brunch, but there was nary a bagel in sight. They used some kind of huge round roll with a hole in the middle. At least they had real lox they call smoked salmon. They only call it “lox” in Melbourne.

The temple car park has become a temporary animal shelter. A car appeared on Friday night & no one knows who owns it. People thought it belonged to someone at services. The same was thought on Saturday. Police were called today & we discovered that a pit bull was its sole occupant. The window is cracked enough, it’s parked under a tree, there’s a bowl of water on the seat, & the dog looks well fed. She didn’t fuss much while we all peered in. There was no odor or evidence that the dog hadn’t been walked recently. The police ran the plates & the car isn’t registered. They didn’t want to call the RSPCA (our ASPCA) since the dog looked ok, & they only were interested in the car if it moved from a private lot onto a public street. Now, I feel compelled to check on the dog daily until the owner moves the car or is located. I’d hate to have the dog taken to the RSPCA if it truly is someone’s well cared for pet. I have the feeling that the car might belong to a homeless person & the dog is special to him or her.

Toby

Terms and Conditions

November 23, 2001

The government official in charge of multi-cultural affairs & I had a discussion of profiling on airplanes& at airports. He told a story about a woman who didn’t like the looks of a man on the plane she was taking. The authorities took him off the flight & interrogated him. As it turned out, he was harmless. Uri was called in when the passenger under suspicion filed a complaint. The man protested that he’d been unjustly singled out. Uri reminded him that the temperature was in the 90s on the day he boarded the plane & that he did look out of place wearing a full wet suit.

There was a notice posted in the elevator today alerting all tenants that workers were going to be abseiling the building. We were cautioned to keep our curtains closed for privacy. We asked, & abseiling (pronounced ab-sailing) involves workers who are on a scaffold suspended by ropes from the roof. They explained that it was also a rock climbing term. We call it rappelling.

Toby

Lighter Fare

November 20, 2001-Moving On
(photos:Giant Rocking Horse,
Norm, Coolies & Me)

I promise this will not be as weighty an email as the previous week’s lot.

The UPJANZA (if you don’t know what this stands for, you haven’t been reading your last few emails) has two categories of membership. Associate members are congregations that pay no dues, but do get a minimal amount of services. Constituent members pay full dues. As if that wasn’t confusing enough, the Moetzah has a full membership for rabbis that entitles them to voting privileges as well as an associate membership. There were no associate members until this morning. The category had been established last year, but they hadn’t decided on the fee that would be charged at this membership level. They were debating between $18, $36, & $50, when David placed a $20 bill in front of the treasurer & said, “We’ve now established the dues, let’s move on.” By the way, the #18 & multiples of 18 are significant because the Hebrew letters that comprise the #18 spell the word “chi” which means “life.” It’s a commonly used design in jewelry.

There was an interesting tidbit that the Maori Rabbi, as I’ve come to call him, told about a problem with race relations in New Zealand. Maoris & Samoans are extremely closely related & share a language. There are grammatical differences in that language usage that sometimes go beyond altercation & lead to battle. Among the high school set, it’s common for Maori students to stick together & for Samoans to do the same. The school staff has narrowly averted riots over issues as abstruse as the gender of a verb & what pronoun should be used with it. On the one hand it’s ludicrous, but on the other hand these kids actually know what verbs, gender, & pronouns are. Our gangs couldn’t measure up on the grammatical field of battle.

We shared a mini-van with the rabbis for our return trip to Adelaide. It was very pleasant & we really enjoyed their company. In fact, we spent many pleasant hours with several of the rabbis in between heated discussions with them. It’s funny how differences can be set aside & commonalities discovered.

City of Roses

I don’t know if I’ve told you about the flowers of Adelaide. We were fortunate to be able to be here in the spring. This is truly a city of roses. There isn’t a street or corner that doesn’t have rose bushes. The displays are enormous, odoriferous, & breathtakingly colorful. We’ve tried to capture them on film, but I know we cannot do them justice. Our memories will just have to hold fast to the images. We walked to the Botanic Gardens this afternoon after returning to the city from Hahndorf. It’s a small but lush area that easily blends into the circle of parklands surrounding the city. We met a charming man along one of the paths. He was quite garrulous & wanted to be sure we saw the huge plane tree down the path. He’s an engineer & quality control manager who still consults. He just returned from Outer Mongolia where he’d been invited (I know it sounds like a joke). He’s been to Japan & the U.S. over 20 times. His home is in Melbourne, but he was in Adelaide for a 57th reunion of his university engineering class.

I want to alert you to the possibility that Max, a dog we know in Akron, might have escaped from his yard & emigrated to Australia. Although he might have been accepted under the law of return since he is part Border collie, there’s a chance he’s still in Akron, but his clone is alive & well & dining at a café in Adelaide. The dog we met was a dead ringer for him, sock & all. The only issue you might have is that there was a sex change involved. If this dog was truly Max, she is enjoying her transgendered life here as a female.

To Vikki, who’s keeping mental notes of upgrades we’ve gotten….when we got to the room in the Adelaide hotel, the A/C wasn’t working. They moved us to a larger room with a slightly more elegant bath. This was not a biggie, but I think it counts.

November 21, 2001-Wine Country

We headed for the Barossa Valley this morning along a fabulous scenic route. We followed a gorge as it paralleled the Torrens River up into the Adelaide Hills. As we drove, I thought I was seeing a lake, but as we got closer, we realized they were purple wildflowers. They’re called Salvation Jane & are a noxious weed. Farmers hate them, but they’re all over the place & add a vibrant touch of color to the green hills.

German Lutherans who were looking for religious freedom settled the Barossa area. They were from Silesia & brought their wine making, baking, & cheese making techniques with them. They set up a different way of wine making. Instead of farmers making the wine from their own grapes at individual wineries, they sold their grapes to a central winery that made wine for each cellar based on the recipes & grapes provided by that particular vineyard.

As we climbed through the gorge, we saw a sign to the big rocking horse. Australia is known for its oversize, larger than life, tacky sculptures of pineapples among other items. Bill Bryson, in his book In a Sunburnt Country, is fascinated by them. These structures are as large as a building & as unsightly as lawn trash, but for some reason, Australians love them. We didn’t even have to get out of the car. We rolled down the window, took a photo, & rolled on.

We were fortunate enough to be going by way of Gumeracha & so were able to be introduced to the concept of Country Killed Meats at the butcher’s. They’re a popular item in the Barossa area & each little town has its own shop. I’m not really sure what it is, but I imagine it has something to do with meat slaughtered on local farms.

We went to a recommended winery & ate lunch at Maggie Beer’s, a restaurant next to a tranquil pond. We bought burnt fig jam at the restaurant & a bottle of Shiraz at the winery. It's for people from Akron who live here and have invited us to their home for dinner tonight. We’re not wine connoisseurs, so we rolled on until we found a fruity Riesling more to our taste. We had a sip here & a swallow there, but didn’t manage to consume much.

Really Cool

I ‘d seen an ad in a brochure for Norm’s Coolies. They’re dogs that put on an obedience demonstration & do sheep herding for the public. The ad didn’t list show times, so we asked directions & headed down a gravel/dirt road that was under construction. We arrived just after the only show of the day. As we approached the gate, Norm was pulling out in his pick up truck with at least 15-20 dogs loaded in the back & on the roof. He wanted to know why we were so late & offered to unload the dogs for us right there on the roadside & give a mini-demo. They were so focused on him that it was eerie as if they were hypnotized. They leapt off the truck and stopped instantly on command. He then loaded them up again & it seemed they went right to the positions they’d been in before. He told them to stay then lowered the tailgate & had me sit on it with him. The dogs are a special breed called Coolies. He’s refined the breed & developed some with blue eyes. I didn’t know who was more interesting, Norm or the Coolies.

Toby

Like and Unlike Minds

November 18, 2001-Open Or Closed?
(photos-Hahndorf)

The rabbi who spoke unsympathetically of American reform rabbis at the meeting of congregations, spoke to the rabbis at the Moetzah conference after dinner tonight. He was surprisingly even handed in his portrayal & even complimented Americans as being full of vitality. I wonder why he was so sardonic when he spoke before congregants? He even moderated his position on appeasing orthodox Jewry by saying that it’s impossible to satisfy them no matter how many traditions we embrace.

David presents his paper on same sex marriage tomorrow. There was a vote that the discussion will be in two parts. The presentation will be made & there will be open discussion. After lunch, there will be a continuation of that discussion without spouses or non-rabbinic staff. There was concern that some of the rabbis would have their jobs on the line if it became known they were in favor of same sex marriages. One of the rabbi’s wives is so upset about being excluded she wouldn’t come to dinner. She said that she has been coming to these sorts of meetings for 35 years & knows how to be discreet. On the other hand, I can understand how some of the rabbis who have congregants who are at the meeting as staff may feel inhibited.

November 19, 2001-Mind Numbing

David’s presentation this morning went very well. He started out with our personal story of when Wendy came out & how our involvement with the GLBT community evolved. He brought up an opposing position that there’s a difference between civil & religious rights. An advocate of that position maintained that it’s not part of the definition of the duties of a rabbi, as he sees it, to do things that are outside tradition. He gave as an example that he would not marry two people who had been living together for a long time but who were not yet divorced from their spouses. That statement seemed not to have any relationship to the discussion since it’s against the law. In the end, he concurred that he’d been in error & that religious rights were part & parcel of civil rights. Another rabbi surprised us by saying she was moved to tears by the terminology of “coming out” for gays & lesbians as well as for their families. She has a niece who is a lesbian & that niece’s mother has come out as a lesbian at age 50. She didn’t understand the anxiety that accompanies this never-ending process in the lives of the LGBT community. Yet another rabbi outed a colleague from the U.S. He assumed it was common knowledge, but it seems that none of those present knew this rabbi was gay.

November 20, 2001-Mind Changing

As it turned out, the meeting where the rabbis would vote on the gay marriage issue was open to me. The staff members had left for home, so I asked if the rabbi’s spouses could attend. My request was granted. I learned several things last night. I’ve realizated that my view of Australia as an egalitarian Mecca has slowly eroded as I’ve learned more about this country & its history. As you’ve seen from my emails, their history is as chequered as ours. Their bigotry may have been institutionalized differently than in the U.S., but it exists as an unwritten undercurrent to this day. I also learned that where rabbis of the U.S. were in the forefront of civil rights, rabbis of Australia are hobbled by fear.

The meeting last night was orderly, but not without disagreement. There were many passionate pleas for inclusion, there were testimonials of examples of inclusiveness of congregations, but, in the end, the status quo was held. The status quo is that a year ago, after many years of discussion, the rabbis decided to study the issue, but put a ban on any of their members doing same sex ceremonies. The Moetzah in Australia wields a power that would never be tolerated by American rabbis. They can make decisions that must be adhered to by all members. One member who said that he & his congregation were ready for same sex ceremonies also said he would bow to the decision of the Moetzah. If nothing else, this meeting solidified any doubt David had that he would ever want to be a progressive rabbi in Australia. That done, a corollary amendment was passed. It said that the Moetzah was to organize the serious study of sexuality since they felt ill prepared on the subject & that they simultaneously would begin the education of their congregations. They also gave themselves a time limit of a year in which to accomplish this. The goal is to get to the point where they can all live with the possibility of a ruling giving the member rabbis discretion in whether or not they are permitted by the Moetzah to perform same sex marriages.

There was a proposal put forth to change the ruling to allow rabbis to follow their conscience in any decision to do those ceremonies or not. And so I learned another lesson about Australia. The rabbis here are paralyzed by the fear of losing their jobs. As one of the 6 out of 15 American member rabbis said, he hadn’t heard any theological or moral arguments from the group that would keep any one of them from doing same sex marriages. All he heard was that they were afraid the upheaval would be so great among their congregants that one of them would end up being the sacrificial lamb to the cause. Another rabbi said they must make a choice between who would be at risk. Would it be the rabbis or would it be the gay community who was on the line. The consensus seemed to be that even if one rabbi did such a ceremony, all would suffer. That’s when I learned of the depth of their fear of losing members to the much stronger orthodox community.

They are truly held captive by the question they ask themselves every time they make a decision. What will the orthodox think? I might have been wrong in guessing they just wanted to please the orthodox movement & be accepted by them, but it may be they’re just afraid of giving their membership any reason to bolt from the progressive movement. They’re truly a minority here & an embattled one at that. Although the promotion of progressive Judaism as an alternative to orthodoxy sounds like a higher cause, it still boils down to their jobs.

It rankles that they easily decided it would be well worth their time to try to create an Australian version of the prayer book yet agonized about whether or not it was worth their while to study the issue of same sex marriage. I thought of the position David & I were in as similar to the Northerners who invaded the South during the civil rights movement of the 1960s & were told by the Southerners they knew “their Negroes” better than the Northerners did.

David & I did not vote, of course, & David didn’t speak last night. He had made his position clear earlier. The vote was 7 in favor of keeping the status quo & proceeding toward the goal of study with reconsideration in a year. Three people voted to keep the status quo indefinitely. One person abstained because, although she was in favor of doing same sex marriages, she was terrified of the consequences she might personally have to suffer. Had parliamentary procedure been followed, the vote would have been split. The chair would have decided in favor of the status quo with further study. I know this because as part of the non-parliamentary procedures, he voted with the body. One person who had made the motion but had left the meeting was counted as a “yes” vote since he had so moved. In the end, I didn’t think much had been accomplished. It occurred to me I’d just witnessed, not a kangaroo court (which would be appropriate in this country), but a kangaroo conference.

Progress?

It was later explained to me that our influence had been greatly felt & there was finally a positive direction, a goal, a process, & timetable for action to take place. Previous meetings had been rancorous & full of ill will. Finally, unlike past meetings, the subject had been handled in an orderly & thoughtful manner. It’s hard to know what was in the past. All I can say is we are leaving this conference with some satisfaction that inroads have been made & this group is headed in the right direction albeit slowly. I, personally, am leaving the conference knowing I do not want to be living as a progressive Jew in Australia.

David said I’ve forgotten all the time & lost votes it took to get this accomplished in the U.S. I’m also reminded of all the times David took unpopular stands of conscience without thought to job security, collegial assent, or congregational politics. In light of what I saw here last night, my pride in him has doubled. I would think that Australians & their rabbis would have had that time to learn & absorb what we have done in the U.S. I was also told that, despite the exterior trappings, Australia is 20 years behind the States on many social issues. A native Australian likened Australia to our state of South Carolina. Despite what we were told at the PFLAG meeting, gays here don’t have it that good. Perhaps some corporations have equal benefits, but we were told it’s because they are “gay” industries, like the airlines. There are the same inequities regarding wills, adoption, & hospital visitation. Artificial insemination is not permitted for single women let alone lesbians.

A shining light in the conference was Rabbi Uri Temal’s report that the multi-cultural center at Griffith University in Brisbane was literally off the ground. It’s been a dream of his as Queensland’s director of ethnic affairs to have one building to house the religious & cultural needs of all the denominations of all the religions & cultures represented in Queensland. It will be dedicated to the continuing study of religion & worship with the goal of accepting religious differences, finding common ground, & finding a way to live together with those differences. He thinks it is unique in the world.

Food Wars

Through this all, David has been doing serious battle with the food choices that were made for the conference. In an attempt to satisfy those who keep kosher, all meals have been vegetarian. Instead of ordering a few veggie meals for those who wanted them, we’ve all had to endure through stacks of vegetables on toast, bowls of vegetables to add to our curried egg sandwiches, & tasteless vegetarian soups accompanied by veggie quiche. I love vegetarian cuisine, but even I got tired of the unimaginative & tasteless offerings. Last night, they finally served perch, but that was bland. David & one other rabbi rebelled & ordered rack of lamb off the regular menu. Please don’t get the idea that our palates have been totally ignored. At one session I looked at the conference tables & they were laden with bottles of Bailey’s, bourbon, & wines. These were accompanied by cookies, assorted teas, coffee, & a jumble of Cadbury candy. Cadbury is their common candy as Hershey’s is ours. It’s made in Hobart, Tasmania, & is thrown about as we do trick or treat leftovers.

Toby

Bumming Around

November 17, 2001-By Bus & Foot
(photos:Glenelg, Tram)

The people in Adelaide are so helpful. Several times we’ve asked for directions & they’ve gone out of their way to guide us. The owner of a Chinese restaurant (great chili chicken) almost put us in her car to go to a grocery store. It had started raining & the woman at our hotel desk offered to take my hat up to the room so I wouldn’t have to turn back. We asked a bus driver about which bus to take & where to wait for it & he got off his bus to point the way. Then he got off the bus to help a family with a stroller. I can’t say enough for the hospitality.

We went to the library to send you all email. It’s open to the public & is free. What we weren’t told was that out of a bank of 20 computer stations, there are only two they reserve for email & Internet usage. They were fully booked for the remainder of the day. We headed over one street to Rundle Mall where there was an Internet café with super fast machines. We spied a Borders store & couldn’t resist. We bought two bat mitzvah gifts for kids in the congregation. The price on the flyleaf of the books said, “$19.95.” The charge in Australia was $A 43. Even with the exchange rate it cost us $US 21.50. The shipping is a killer on imported printed material & there’s only one distributor in all of Australia. Even Borders has to buy through them & can’t ship direct.

Our next stop was the South Australian Museum. Adelaide is in the state of South Australia. We only got to do one floor. It was about the indigenous people & was a mixture of displays & interactive video. Some of the displays included movie footage shot in the early 1900’s. It was fascinating to see the people who were still living the tribal life going about their days hunting, gathering, cooking, etc. There were also videos of modern aborigines who told about the lives they were leading & the memories they had of the old days. One in particular reminded me of a video from the Holocaust Museum in Wash., D.C. The man told of how he & his siblings returned to the area where his family used to live. Elders joined them and identified the burial sites & skeletal remains of people who’d been friends. Some of the bones were of the narrator’s grandfather.

November 18, 2001-Dining & Whining

We had a lovely dinner at the top of a hotel last night overlooking the city at sunset. Havdallah (the service marking the end of the Sabbath & the separation between the Sabbath & the rest of the week) was led by Rabbi Aviva Bass (not the Rabbi Aviva mentioned in a previous email). She has a lovely voice & led us in an exquisite rendition of the Debbie Friedman melodies. There was an addition of a song about Miriam the prophetess to compliment the traditional song about Eliahu Hanavi (Elijah the Prophet). She also led us in a directed meditation. David said that’s a very Reconstructionist & Jewish Renewal thing to do. They’re branches of Judaism along with the more commonly known Reform, Conservative, & Orthodox. I reverted to tai chi during the meditation & did chi gung breathing. It worked. I managed to get my chi going. I really think I get more from a 10-20 minute nap than I do from meditation or the chi gung breathing.

We sat with the couple from our congregation who are trying to get pregnant. We were at a large round table for ten. At first no one sat with us. Most had been exposed to really cute 16 month old. When he wants something, he lets out a piercing scream that makes my ears ache. I’ve literally had to turn my head away from the noise or cover the ear nearest to him. The shriek has its effect on his parents. They immediately do whatever they can to stop it whether it’s feeding him, picking him up, or any other of the myriad & varied desires in the mind of a toddler. At last we were joined by five brave souls. Three were teen-agers who were with the youth group & the other two were the brother & sister-in-law of people in Akron who gets these emails. The man is president of his congregation in Adelaide & a professor at the university here. He teaches marketing & is an oenophile. He majored in horticulture at Ohio State & got his PhD. at Cornell, I believe. He was most helpful in planning our tour of the Barossa Valley & its vineyards after the conference.

During dinner, I was told some more about the rabbi from New Zealand who did the Maori chant. Before Hannukah one year, he went to some Maori leaders in the community & asked if it would be wrong to ask them to write a Maori “akkah” (epic story recited in a chant with hand motions) about the Hannukah story. They agreed so now there’s a Maori version of Hannukah. I’d love to hear it. I also learned that the Maoris are close relatives of Hawaiians. The language is very similar. For example, the Maori word for hello is “aroha.” It’s kind of like when Asians can’t pronounce the “L” sound. Speaking of Hawaii, when I told you about the sand on the beach here squeaking, many of you mentioned that the sand on Waikiki Beach also squeaks. I found out that this is because Waikiki Beach is not natural. It was constructed from sand imported from Gold Coast, Australia.

By the Sea

We took off for Glenelg this afternoon. It’s a seaside resort accessible by tram. The tram, built in 1929, is still used as an integral part of the transportation system of Adelaide. It took 30 minutes & many stops to get to Glenelg. Typical of what I’ve been telling you about the people in Adelaide, an older woman got on board & asked directions about getting from the stop where she would be getting off to the place she needed to go. The driver & ticket taker must not have been sure that she understood, because instead of letting her get off at the regular tram stop, they stopped the tram at the door of the place she wanted to go.

When we got to Glenelg, it was so cold & blustery we just ate lunch & headed back to town. We found a café with an enclosed, heated eating room that overlooked the Indian Ocean. We sat in our warm cocoon & watched a never-ending parade of dogs & their people. It was a contest of wills as to who would win the game of dogs vs. seagulls. I think the all around losers were the people who were trying to rein in their leashed animals. Our waitress told us that one of the diners on the outdoor patio was with her god dog. I was then formally introduced to Cooper, the Rhodesian ridgeback & got in a few good hugs before being overwhelmed by his very wet greeting of many licks.

I got brave when ordering & decided to try white bait. If you recall, that’s a tiny fish fried & served whole. They were smaller than my little finger & tasty. The bones, if any, were undetectable, but the coating didn’t always completely cover their eyes. I ended up asking for tomato sauce (ketchup) to mask it. They had a fishier taste than I like, but were not bad. I might even consider ordering them again. I also got an order of grilled veggies that were fine until a fly decided to commit suicide in them.

Some History

When we arrived back in Adelaide, we hopped onto a free shuttle bus they have roaming around the city. By now, it was drizzling & we decided to head for an indoor venue. Ayres House was en route, so we got off at that stop & headed for shelter. Sir Ayres is the man for whom Ayres Rock was named. He arrived in Adelaide at age 18 & by 19 he was able to buy a few shares in a copper mine in Burra where he ultimately made his fortune. He & his family lived in the house from 1855-1896. The house went through many additions as his family grew & as his position demanded he have grander quarters. He ended up being the premier of the state of South Australia & worked very hard for the formation of a union of Australian states. He died before that was a reality &, since none of his eight children wanted the house, it passed into the public domain. Eventually, it became a part of the land trust & was lovingly restored.

We had to rush back to the hotel so we could join the rabbis were going to Part II of the conference. The Moetzah (the council), as the rabbinic group is called here, was meeting in a Germanic town in the Adelaide Hills region called Hahndorf. It’s only 18 miles from Adelaide & a small bus was rented to transport us. As one of the rabbis got on, he asked if this was the bus to Cocksville. He then explained that “hahn” in German means rooster or cock & “dorf” means village. We agreed it was an appropriate name.

Shacking Up

The drive was a slow climb through green hillside. We quickly left the city & were in farmland. It looked like Holmes County, Ohio, without buggies or Amish. As we turned into the resort we did see a petting zoo with kangaroos. I’m assuming they aren’t the roos featured on the menu here. The place is more like an old resort in the Catskills Mts. of New York. We used to call them bungalow colonies in the 1950’s & these housekeeping cottages were most likely built around that time. Believe me, it’s nothing like the famous Catskill hotels of yore where food was king & entertainers started their careers. This is pretty basic, but is nowhere near as bad as Alice Springs. David’s not happy. He really liked our hotel in Adelaide. He’ll have to be patient. We go back there the 20th & 21st on our own.

For those of you who’ve been impatiently awaiting the vote on the name change for AANZUJP, the tally is in. The new name is UPJ:ANZA. It stands for Union of Progressive Jews: Australia, New Zealand, Asia. If I had a vote, it would have been for a simple JUP or PUJ.

Toby

Near and Far

November 13, 2001-Running Hot and Cold
(photo: Adelaide)

I’ve told you that Australians use the term “partner” to refer to gay or straight unmarried couples living in a committed relationship. When I wrote about the Xmas cards yesterday, I forgot to tell you they have special cards for partners.

We spoke to Daniel, Vikki, & Alex today. I really wanted to let David hear Alex sing “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead” in Hebrew. Her school is putting on the play The Wizard of Oz in Hebrew & David wasn’t here the last time when she sang it to me. It was a delight. I chuckled just watching him listen to it. Then we got to hear her play two tunes on her clarinet. We didn’t even know she was taking lessons. I learned today that her school requires kids to play an instrument in the band. That’s great!

But the best part of the conversation was when Daniel answered the phone & said that they were hanging out in front of a fire in the fireplace. We had just turned our air conditioning on for the first time. We had a flying cockroach visit us during the evening & David decided he couldn’t live with that. I didn’t know that they disgusted him so. I guess there are still surprises after almost 38 years of marriage. The weather went back to “fine” yesterday & we went back to open windows today. Life is tough. November 14, 2001-Friendly Club I was the speaker this morning at the Friendship Club. It’s a group of men & women who meet at the Temple to discuss varied subjects & to stimulate their minds. They wanted to know about real estate in America, so I filled them in. One thing I learned was that here they now have a five day cooling off period during which time the buyer can back out of a contract & only lose a small percent of the deposit. Buyers are now going around making offers on several properties. Then they go to the seller of the one they’re most interested in & pressure him into lowering the price with the threat that if he doesn’t the buyer will buy one of the other properties. It’s created quite a problem.

The rest of the meeting was the discussion of questions. One question was, “What, if anything, are you doing about the anthrax/terrorist threat?” One woman said, tongue in cheek, that a neighbor of hers is an Arab & that she’s having him open all of her mail.

November 16, 2001-Adelaide

As we approached the Adelaide airport, we flew over a flat patchwork of farms in shades of tan & brown. It could have passed for Oklahoma. Slowly, greens appeared & I realized we were flying over the foothills of the Flinders Range. The Murray River began to wend its way through the landscape & vineyards came into view. As we landed, we caught a glimpse of the ocean. I looked on the map & it is the Indian Ocean. That’s a first for us. The area’s claim to fame is that it’s the only state in Australia not established by convicts. Germans, Brits, & other Europeans came here & built villages much like the ones they knew at home. It’s laid out on a series of grids, & a ring of parks surrounds the entire city with the Torrens River running through it. The Europeans, especially the Germans, brought wine to the region & it has flourished as one of the backbones of the economy. From the city & hillsides, you’ld never guess that a desert looms over it all. The old buildings were made of sandstone & brick since there were so few trees.

AANZUPJ

We’re in Adelaide for an AANZUPJ Conference. It stands for Australia, Asia, New Zealand Union of Progressive Judaism. They’re considering changing the name to something more manageable. There are about fifty rabbis & congregational leaders here including representatives from Hong Kong & Singapore.

One thing we found was you can’t drink the tap water in Adelaide. It’s been described as looking like something a crocodile has lived in or just. The water in the hotel looks ok, but we’re being cautious & bought a 10-liter jug for drinking. We’re told the tap water is ok for brushing teeth. It is an odd problem to have in such a beautifully laid out & sophisticated city.

The AANZUJP meeting started with a welcome by the Kaurna people who comprise the indigenous tribe living in the area before the “white fellas” wiped them out. The chair of the meeting gave the leader a shofar as a symbol of our people & said she would have to learn to play it. The chair mentioned that if the Kaurna woman could play a didgeridoo, she would be able to play the shofar. That illustrated the chair’s ignorance of the tribal culture. As you all know since you’ve been reading these emails, aborigine women aren’t permitted to play a didgeridoo. Secondly, a didgeridoo isn’t played as a horn by fixing the lips to the mouthpiece & blowing. It’s played by blowing air over the lips & loosely vibrating lips & vocal chords at the same time. I
guess, as tourists, we’ve been privileged to learn more about their people than the Aussies have.

Dinner was preceded by an address by Gaby Levi, the Israeli ambassador to Australia. The meal was at the hotel. The food was what you’d expect at a nice Best Western. Poor David had to eat perch. It had some kind of white cream sauce on it that he said made it palatable. I asked for mine without the sauce. That made it tasteless. Thank goodness for lemon. The birkat hamazon, grace after a meals, was sung. For those of you who are familiar with it, they started with Shir Hamaalot to the tune of Waltzing Matilda. It was hysterical. They do have a sense of humor.
The after dinner speaker was a rabbi who used to be at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. As he says, he’s the most foreign person he knows. He was born in Poland, escaped as a baby to England, lived in Canada, & is now head of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Israel. That’s the organization that oversees non-American congregations. His talk started out ok, but quickly launched into a critique of American Reform Judaism. What he forgot was that many rabbis at the conference were Americans since that’s where reform rabbis are made. That’s where the seminaries are. He’s of the mind that we need to make peace with the orthodox community by observing the halachah, customs, that are dear to them. He clings to the false hope that one day they will accept us. One example he gave was that, in the case of one non-Jewish parent, the reform movement recognizes patrilineal & matrilineal descent in affirming that a child is Jewish rather than the orthodox view of only going by the religion of the mother. He’s also opposed to sanctification of gay/lesbian marriage. This will get really interesting since David is delivering a paper on just that topic at the rabbinic meeting that follows this one in a few days.

He seems to be missing the definition of progressive/reform Judaism. Change is an integral part of it. Constant study of traditions & laws in light of increased information & modern knowledge are part & parcel of the fabric of the movement. If debate & openness were frozen in the past, we would be orthodox. Then there was the point at which he was just plain wrong. He said that American reform rabbis performed inter-marriage to fill a popular demand & to better maintain membership & market their congregations. He claimed that American rabbis do what is fashionable, not holy. I was very proud that David was able to stay in his seat & be a good boy. I, on the other hand, was squirming. How dare he speak as an expert of American Reform Judaism & cast it in such a negative light. How dare he set himself up as an expert & then be so wrong? This is the rabbi whose opinions were roundly cast aside at a convention of 600 rabbis in Phoenix in the late1980’s.

Hopping

This afternoon, we skipped out on the meeting & took a bus tour of the city. It was a hop on & hop off kind of affair. We got off at the library to check out the free Internet usage & ran into a man wearing a kippah (Jewish head covering) who started a conversation. Assuming he was Jewish I mentioned the conference. It turned out that he was a Messianic Jew. He asked me if I had seen the light or did I believe that I would just molder in the ground & be eaten by worms after I died. I mentioned that there is an afterlife concept in Judaism & the Jews did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but that we practiced Judaism as Jesus had as the Jew he was. End of conversation.

Toby

Nows and Thens

November 11, 2001-Memories

Today was Remembrance Day here & Veteran’s Day in the U.S. David did a memorial service at 11A.M., on the 11th day of the 11th month. I remember being in school & having a moment of silence at that hour. Here we had a short service held at the Jewish section of a cemetery. Jewish ex-servicemen & women of the area attended. The first difference I detected was they sang Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem. I really didn’t understand all the words, but I agree with David when he said they should have stayed with God Save the Queen. The name of the song alone sounds like a move in a board game. There’s also a shopping mall named Australia Fair. Another difference was they played a recording of a bugler. It wasn’t Taps, but it was called Last Post & Reveille, & it was unfamiliar. I guess each nation’s military has different tunes. They also placed a wreath on a stone marker that looked like a tombstone. I found that unusual since, as a rule, Jewish funerals don’t use wreaths or flowers. They presented David with a book written by Jack Epstein, a member of the congregation who recently died. It’s called Australian Jewry’s Book of Honour: World War II. It’s a history of the role of Jewish Australians during that war. Unfortunately, given the world situation, David had plenty of material for his talk.

History

We had lunch with some people from the congregation. There was a discussion of the election. John Howard, the incumbent prime minister, won. I know that the New York Times has run articles about the situation with the Muslim boat people from Afghanistan, but the controversy has been raging since we got here. Even before 9/11, most people agreed with Howard. There’s a sense of fair play that runs deep & Australians don’t like the idea of anyone “jumping the queue.”
As all countries do, they have legal means for immigration. There must be loopholes for asylum seekers, but not when they come by the boatload. I remarked that we have it easier with Mexicans. We just ship them back across the border & don’t have to worry about them drowning in the Rio Grande. Of course, they do die in the desert. Cubans were a different story, but most of then came a long time ago & there wasn’t a fear of terrorists being among them, just communists. We’ve shipped Haitians back to Haiti. And in the back of all of our minds was the boatload of Jews who were sent back to die in Germany during WWII.

That brought us to a piece of Australian history that was new to me. The discussion began when one of the men recounted his arrival in New Zealand. He was single, but his brother, who later tried to join him, was married to a Jewish woman from Bombay. She definitely looked Indian. New Zealand had an all white immigration policy as did Australia until the late 60’s or early 70’s. This was not written law, but was unspoken policy. They decided to try to get into Australia & figured that they were successful because the Indian woman was counted as Jewish. There was no list of desirable or undesirable groups & all were processed. The catch was that there was a language test that was required for entry. You would think the immigrants would need a working knowledge of English & that was true….for some. Others were given tests in Chinese, unless they were Chinese. Then they were given a test in French. If you spoke English, but were too dark, your test could be in Russian. It reminds me of the voter registration tests in the South. Now Australians profess to be the most open & accepting nation in the world & have a growing non-white population. That’s why the policy on the boat people is such an embarrassment. But we have heard many negative comments about the Japanese taking over the Gold Coast, & the large Muslim presence isn’t only resented, it’s now feared.

After lunch we went home to collapse. A storm was brewing & I felt as if I was in a travel commercial for the tropics. The drapes were blowing in through open windows & was a froth whipping up on the pool. Lightening lit up the sky as thunder rolled down from the mountains. It wasn’t like any thunder I’ve ever heard. It didn’t rumble, it boomed. There weren’t long, reverberating claps that went on forever. It sounded like individual cannon shots. They were short, deep, & resonant.

Lessons Learned

I’m reading a novel about India. One of the characters is an American woman who has lived there a long time & married an Indian. In one scene, she has just gotten into a taxi in Bombay & thinks, "The fastest way to appreciate the concept of karma was to take any form of public transportation in India. If you survived, your karma was good. If you did not, your karma was bad. This daily demonstration of karmic logic had convinced her that Hinduism was far in advance of anything the West had yet devised. American scientists had only just discovered the theory of chaos as the prevailing logic of the universe. Hindus had been living it for five thousand years." In light of 9/11, there must be more believers in this. In Yiddish, we say, "It's b'shert."
Our pictures came back from our trip to Cairns & the Center. There’s a great one of me sleeping on the boat train on the Daintree River. I didn’t even know that David took it. The photo I took of the giant moth in our apartment was also in the pack. I really didn’t need the photo since this morning it or its close relative returned. I woke up to a note from David saying there was a moth in the closet & he didn’t want to try to catch it for fear of waking me. No worries. I scooped up moth-friend in the old reliable container & sent it on its way.

I was in a card shop looking at the Xmas cards & almost laughed aloud. They have such cute ones that are typically Australian. My favorite said, “ On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,” then you open it & it says, “A koala in a gum tree.” Finding Chanukah cards was more difficult. We finally located them at one store in a mall that must have at least 15 stores selling greeting cards. When we went to the Post to buy stamps, I found out that Xmas cards cost 20 cents less to send to the U.S. than any other card including Chanukah cards.

Toby

Making Do

November 8, 2001-Whinging

We had dinner at the Oriental Gourmet, Alice Springs. The meal was good & there was more energy in that restaurant than in the whole town. It was run by three people. There was the cook whom we never saw, but who hustled to feed a packed place. The two owners waited tables, bussed, acted as hosts, & handled carryout orders. Alice, & the Center in general, is known for its laid back nature. This restaurant was an anomaly.

And now for a review of the bathrooms at the Alice Springs airport: They were not bad & had the first public showers I’ve seen at an airport. On the back of the stall door was posted information on how to Play it Safe in Australia. It wasn’t about sunscreen & hats. It was how to avoid HIV-AIDS. Good on them.

My seat companion on the 3-hour flight was another story. He came on board drunk at 11 AM. He smelled of alcohol & cigarettes & the mint gum he chewed didn’t mitigate the odor. Fortunately he fell asleep after lunch. He told me he was on a 2-week leave from a job on an oil rig 180 miles from Alice. They work two weeks on & two weeks off. I guess they’d go nuts out there without a break.

The in-flight movie was One Night at McCool’s with Liv Tyler, Matt Damon, Paul Reiser, & Michael Douglas. It was a silly movie, but I found myself laughing out loud at the end. I thought David was watching it, but he thought it was awful & turned it off. I didn’t know our taste in movies could be that different. Also learned a little tidbit from the Qantas magazine. Did you know the reason pigs are so enthusiastic about rooting out truffles? It seems that truffles smell like potential mates. Think of that when you eat them ( either pigs or truffles). Escapees When we arrived at the airport in Sydney I realized we’d made a clean escape from Alice. I couldn’t stand it if we had to stay another night. The whole town was grungy. Even the nicer restaurants were unappealing. We did find one for lunch & one for dinner yesterday that were fine. I think we both got a stomach reaction from the water. It wasn’t bad, just different enough to upset us for a day until we figured it out. And we were drinking bottled water.

David (whose cleanliness standards are lower than mine) & I had a discussion about my aversion this morning. The hostel/hotel cost $A 80, so that’s $US 40. I maintained that budget doesn’t have to mean dirt. Paint is cheap as is soap & water. They could pay some of those backpacking kids who stay there to do the work. The Red Roof Inn in Akron has rooms for $39.95 & I can’t imagine they’re anywhere like the place we stayed. In fact, I’ve been in those rooms & they’re nice. David just sat down next to me & said, “You’re still bitchin’ about that? Get over it.” This is the end of my diatribe.

November 10, 2001-Homecoming

When we landed at the Gold Coast Airport in Coolangatta, I was struck once again by the beauty of the place. As we deplaned, the mountains were looming to one side & the sea to the other. You’ll be happy to hear that the weather has become very rainy & dismal, although warm. It’s spring now & the start of their rainy season. In fact, this summer is predicted to be very stormy with a large possibility of cyclones. Lucky us.

As we got out of the taxi at our apartment building, the kookaburras were warbling their welcome. I wonder how they knew it was us? There was a message on the answering machine from Syd & Janet Bruce asking if we wanted to meet them at the Thai restaurant. Of course we did. It was so nice to come home to friends. We left our luggage & laundry & decided we could grocery shop the next day.

Friday was busy with all we hadn’t done on Thursday plus I decided the apartment needed cleaning. We managed to get it all done, but had no down time before services. As we were pulling out of the garage, we heard a thumping sound from the rear of the car. The trunk is hard to close & I thought it might be flapping. David got out to investigate & found a flat tire. We called the Temple to let them know why we’d be late, &, oddly enough the man (Jack Capkin) who answered the phone, didn’t think to offer to pick us up. Instead, he suggested we skip services & that he would conduct them. David told him we would take a taxi & we did. Odd that! We later found out he thought of picking us up after he’d hung up but didn’t know how to reach us.

Toby

Grit and Glory

November 7, 2001-The Worst Little Motel
(photos:Telegraph station,Telly the camel & Toby,
School of the Air)

I was not prepared to describe our motel room yesterday. I was too traumatized. I survived the night by being out of the room until we were ready to go to bed. I can honestly say that until I crawled between the sheets, I didn’t sit down on the bed or a chair. Fortunately I had my lenses out in the shower so I only saw a fuzzy residue, but when I dropped the top to the shampoo I knew I would have to open my eyes & actually look at the drain where it landed. There was no way I was going to blindly feel around the floor in search of it. Not only is the carpet the original 1960’s indoor-outdoor, but I’m sure that it has never felt a drop of shampoo. The walls are dirt speckled in addition to other speckles about which I’m afraid to conjecture. The first motel room I’ve been in that has a queen size bed & a bunk bed. I’m sure it’s used as a hostel room when not booked as a private one.

David suggested we look for another place, but it was late in the afternoon when we arrived yesterday & we wanted to see some sights. As you can tell, I survived until morning none the worse for the filth. Speaking of which, a continental breakfast was included with our room. The dining room of the hostel was even more ghastly than the room. I would rank it as bad as any camp dining hall & kitchen I have ever seen. I stuck to bottled juice & boxed cereal without milk. Other guests said that the milk had turned. The “cook” opened a new jug & it too tasted off. I think the entire lot had gone bad although they were still within the freshness date. The flies weren’t as bad as some camps, but it was early in the day & still cool. They really come out en masse in the heat of the day. The Australian salute is basically waving your hand to get rid of the flies.

There’s a 1-5 star rating system in Australia, but I’ve found it’s much different than we’re used to. They don’t seem to be as discerning. This motel is listed as a 3 star. The motel we stayed at in Cairns was a 3 ½ star. In retrospect, it was more than half a star better than this one. We’ll have to take this into consideration when booking in the future.

There are an awful lot of aborigines in this area. They hang out around downtown where there’s a park with public restrooms, an indoor mall, & a pedestrian mall. They look disheveled & meander up & down the streets. Police cars are in evidence, but we didn’t see any trouble. When I went to use the indoor mall restroom, I was charged fifty cents. I was so shocked I asked the attendant what the rationale was for the charge. She told me quite candidly that it was to keep the masses out, “you know what I mean.” And I did.

Old Time Communications

There was a gorgeous thunderstorm last night & the air was fresh as we headed out to see the original telegraph station. Along the road we passed a road train hauling 4 BP gas tankers. The telegraph station was the first settlement in Alice Springs. There’s even a spring there.. It was a working relay station from 1872-1932. They had a camel pen to show us how the residents hauled goods & supplies from the nearest train depot which was several hundred km away. The telegraph revolutionized communication in Australia. It used to take three months to send a letter to England. It still takes three months to ship parcels. Surface mail hasn’t changed since then. Aside from the history & the quaint tin roofed stone buildings, the bird life was enchanting. We saw gulahs, gray birds with pink breasts. They look like parrots & are about the same size.

Next we went to the School of the Air. In 1951, a woman was sitting in the radio room of the Royal Australian Flying Doctor Service (RAFDS) & thought about all of the children who were isolated in the outback. She thought it would be a good idea to connect them to a teacher by radio. That way they could remain with their families & not have to miss out on education or go to boarding school. The school runs according to the public school year with the same holiday times. Each child has a tutor who is a family member or a paid tutor & in the home during the school day. There must be a special area in the home designated as a classroom. There’s a set time for radio class with group & individual instruction followed by assignments done with the tutor. Lessons are air mailed to each student & since most of them have home landing strips for this purpose or for the RAFDS in case of emergency, airmail is used to return assignments to the teacher as well. Audio-video & print material as well as fax is used. It takes 35 minutes to download a page of information since the homes where the children live have low voltage & work off of generators so computers are used for email & the Internet only. High school age students have a choice of taking correspondence courses or going to boarding school. There are home visits made by the teachers at regular intervals. The 30 aboriginal children are visited more often. They take English as a second language & their tutors teach them in their native tongue. All children learn Indonesian as a foreign language. That should come in handy. We heard that the Muslims had just bombed an Australian school in Indonesia. Once a year the 130 children enrolled in the Alice Springs school have a get together & festival so they can interact & get to know who’s in their class. There are 17 schools of the air located across the country. The cost is $100/family /year. Government funding & donations make up the rest of the budget. Visitors could see & hear a lesson in progress. They were playing some kind of educational board game. In the next studio, Nickelodeon was filming a program.

As we were leaving the school, a family that sounded American was planning to call a taxi. They were from Winnipeg, Canada, & he was on a teacher exchange program in Melbourne. He went next door to visit a public school building & his wife & children, ages 7 & 5, were waiting for him to return so they could call the cab. We offered to give them a lift if they were going somewhere close by. That was a silly question since everything in Alice is close. They were on their way to the telegraph station. The Mom ran off to get her husband leaving the two children sitting on a ledge. I didn’t realize it until David pointed it out, but that put us in charge of the kids. Our car was due back at the rental place in a half hour & we hoped the parents would return quickly. They came running back from the school & we managed to get everything accomplished in time. What we realized after it was all over was that we & they had just negated all the lessons about not talking to strangers or getting into cars with strangers. They even left the kids with strangers.

Missions of Mercy

Our next stop was the RAFDS or flying doctors. A missionary established it in 1929. The Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Service made the first flight, hence Qantas. Originally the flying docs provided emergency services treating on site or transport to a hospital. Now they’re an integral part of the health care system here. They’re based in remote areas as well as in cities where they provide med-evac services as well as clinical care in the outback. They have a fascinating array of very clever charts & equipment to diagnose & treat. There are charts of the human body marked off in sections with each area having its own letter or number. They supply each station (ranch) or outpost with a medical box that has medical supplies & medication that are identified by number. So if you have a pain or a cut on # 15 or letter D, you simply take two # 35s, rub in some # 12, & radio back in the morning. I can just hear those outback wives now saying, “Not tonight dear, I have a #26.”

Toby